Amrita Pritam | Writer and Poet| Director - Madhulika

Amrita Pritam | Indian writer and poet | Jewels of Indian Literature | Director - Madhulika

Subsumed by History and Nation

Subsumed by History and Nation

By  Afsan Chowdhury

Where does Faiz the poet and pan-Southasian Marxist end and Faiz the Pakistani begin? This is a question to which Bangladeshis, among others, still seek an answer.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz remains one of the great unsolved enigmas of Southasian literature. Where does Faiz the poet end and Faiz the politician begin? Where does the pan-Southasian Marxist end and the Pakistani begin? His engagement with these contradictory identities constitutes a painful puzzle for his admirers. This becomes all the more complex because Faiz never seemed to have belonged fully to any one land – the boundaries of his literary, political and cultural life are fluid, flowing  and overlapping.

The issue becomes even more complex for a Bangladeshi admirer such as this writer, who was born in the 1950s and to whom Faiz offers a complex identity and a bonding to great ideals crossing all borders. He is one Pakistani whom Bangladeshis have looked upon with the greatest possible admiration and affection. Yet what challenges this bond is the Faiz of during and immediately after 1971. During those terrible days, Bangladeshis who knew about or of him would ask each other, What is Faiz saying about all this? He had become the ‘Good Pakistani’ in the eyes of those in the East. Yet, was Faiz ever a person who represented more than Pakistan? Was it possible for him to escape being a Pakistani and have a wider identity encompassing all the admiring nations of Southasia and beyond?

During the late 1960s, Munir Chowdhury hosted a literary television show in East Pakistan, during which he would discuss various writers of Pakistan. He was a legendary speaker, and employed his dramatic skills to present literary luminaries to a devoted public. In one show he talked about Faiz, his friend and fellow-traveller. Chowdhury focused on the poem ‘Mujhse pahli si muhabbat mere mehboob na maang’, presenting Faiz as a social revolutionary and a poet of the oppressed. This presentation suited Chowdhury, who had been a Communist Party member, jailed in 1952 for his activism during the Bengali-focused Language Movement, and a lifelong literary activist who had become an icon of Bengali nationalism. He had moved on from his firebrand days, however, to become more a writer than a politician, an unparalleled teacher and East Pakistan’s leading dramatist.

Most importantly, Chowdhury’s love for Faiz’s poetry was real. His introduction was one of the memorable moments of my life, an introduction to a poet of passion and beauty whom I admire to this day. Though I understand little of the literary tradition that Faiz upholds or the magnificent language of his poetry, I appreciate it – somewhere, there is a deep bond that transcends poetic pursuits. Yet my affection is also tinged with pain, as I see Faiz nationalised, regionalised, made language-specific. This is a tragedy for a poet who spoke to all of us once.

Defanging the revolutionary

 
During the 1940s, Faiz was certainly a Marxist. At that time he was in then-undivided India and had gone to war as an officer of the British Indian army, but returned home to become a journalist. He was married to Alys, a British sympathiser of the communists, whose sister was married to an Indian who taught in Aligarh. During this period, as the nation-states of Pakistan and India came into being, the Communist Party (CP) told its members to choose countries according to their religions. Thus, many communists in India and Pakistan emigrated across the new border obeying the party diktat. Many critics argue that the Communist Party went ‘communal’ even before that, when it asked cadres to join the Muslim League or Congress as per their respective religious identity. Harnessing India’s political will proved to be quite beyond the capacity of the party, and the CP was relegated to a marginal role.

After Partition, Faiz, who had earlier worked on both sides of the new border, chose to live in Pakistan. Was this because he believed in the political structure and state ideology of the new country, one that subsequently moved increasingly towards becoming what was obvious in its charter – a state for one faith alone? Faiz was never a Muslim Leaguer, nor even a ‘Muslim’, so why then would he choose Pakistan? Perhaps it was never more than a move to his homeland, which by all standards was much less open than India. It is difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons that attracted him to Pakistan, but the new country’s ideals certainly would not have been guiding his decision – maybe, going home was all it was about.

In Pakistan after 1947, Faiz was known for his views and activism, a man clearly a part of the left. He was involved with trade unionism, which even in those early days in Pakistan was considered an activity almost treasonous. In 1950-51 Faiz was arrested, along with Communist Party leader Sajjad Zahir and a few military officers led by General Akbar Khan, for planning a military takeover. There was a period of prolonged incarceration and a trial followed by a four-year sentence.

What was Faiz trying to do? Gen Akbar, leader of what has since become known as the Rawalpindi conspiracy, was a rabid Pakistani nationalist. He wanted to take over Pakistan – not because he wanted a new form of the state, but because he was frustrated with the Pakistani leadership, considering it too moderate in dealing with India. How did Sajjad Zahir and Faiz get involved with such a person? Where was the common space? I have not come across any material on the motives of the participants, or of the deals that must have been made between these two completely disparate groups, the communists and the ultra-nationalists, to achieve this alliance.

Around the world, communist parties generally tend not to be pro-army when out of power. But there has always been a fatal attraction among communists towards the military, in the belief that a coup can deliver revolution in a quick stroke, rendering organisational work and resilience unnecessary. This has been tried in Africa with a marked lack of success, as in Ethiopia and Mozambique; and so too in Bangladesh, where a one-legged War of Liberation hero, Colonel Abu Taher, came to power for a few hours in November 1975. He led his Marxist activists in an anti-officer uprising, which was to deliver socialism. Along with many others, he was hanged. History has also shown that attempts by communists to use the military path to power usually end in failure.

There seems to be no satisfactory explanation for the left involvement in the 1950 Pakistan coup attempt. But Faiz was involved, or we assume he was, because no ‘confession’ exists. Soon after the imprisonment, his active political life also began to fade and, anyway, the CP was banned in 1954. In the public mind, Faiz gradually became many other things: one of the great poets of our time, a friend of the Sufis of Pakistan and, finally, the safest and most innocuous, an outspoken lover of alcohol. Faiz was transformed and fitted into the benign identity of a great poet who does not challenge the state. Yet the fact remains: he did challenge it, albeit unsuccessfully.

Poets as communists

 

The identities of poets and communists do not always go well together. Poets usually tend to be people of words and passion, moved to politics by the power of the heart, not ideology. Over time, the two identities can become contested, if not came in direct conflict. The Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was always a better poet than a Marxist revolutionary, but he did try to cultivate a mix of both identities. Bangladesh’s national poet, Nazrul Islam, was jailed for sedition and was a fellow-traveller of the Communist Party; he even ran the party’s official newspaper in Bengal but drifted away over time, as his poetry and songs began to take priority. Also his inter-faith devoutness, believing in the mystic constructs of Islam and Hinduism (hardly a Marxist attitude, whichever way you look at it) became increasingly important to him. Early senility robbed him of his faculties when barely past forty, and things therefore never really reached a point where this conflict could grow larger.

Faiz had a better formal education than Nazrul, and also had a better knowledge of Marxist dogma and its application. He was also more middle-class and shareef (genteel). His poetry’s roots and tools were the fine wine of Urdu and Persian literature; even his most famous poem ‘Mujhse pehli simuhabbat’, was written in the language of a chosen few, a highly stylised articulate Persian-Urdu that would be meaningful only to the well-educated. He was in many ways far more representative of the CP leadership’s class and cultural roots than was Nazrul, who came from a peasant background.

Yet that only underlines the original question: Where could Faiz’s politics find space in Pakistan? Unlike East Pakistan, where the communist tradition was deep and its politics itself spurred on by Marxist intellectuals and cultural activists, West Pakistan was almost completely bereft of such impulses, united in hatred for India but not much more. One could name Mian Iftikharuddin and Wali Khan, but these politicians were more Pashtun than Marxist, and much of the left nationalism was limited to NWFP and Balochistan. The Punjabis of Pakistan were not known for their leftist leanings. Was Faiz’s much vaunted loneliness merely a poetic expression, or did it go deeper?

As children in Dhaka, we heard about Faiz’s refusal to write a laudatory editorial in the Pakistan Times – the paper owned by Mian Iftikharuddin and edited by Faiz – about the martial law imposed by Gen Ayub Khan in 1958. Soon the paper was taken over by the government and Faiz had to leave. For some reason, the political Faiz went missing after that defiant stand, at least as far as pan-Pakistani politics was concerned – the kind of politics that could also resonate in East Pakistan. Faiz was from then on a poet, not a socialist poet.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan that Faiz wanted to transform in the image of his ideals ended in 1971. During the days after the crackdown on Dhaka on 25 March of that year, as people wondered how the people of the Western half felt about the bloody events in the East, they heard a chorus of approval, led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto saying, ‘Thank God! Pakistan is saved!’ This was a famously premature statement, of course, as all of Bhutto’s machinations ran out of momentum in the end, with Pakistan collapsing in ignominy in December of that year. During those days, those who knew would ask, What did Faiz say? Did he protest? Did he give a statement saying it was wrong? In fact, we do not know what Faiz did. But we do know that this was one man many Bangladeshis expected to stand up for them. Of course, it was unfair to expect that Pakistanis who wished to express dissent could do so in a martial-law governed Pakistan. Very few could, and those who did went to jail or paid an even higher price. But Bangladeshis were demanding all this from the person – poet and politician – they imagined Faiz to be, rather than a person of flesh and blood who lived in Pakistan. In a way, Faiz had become a prisoner of the history of Pakistan.

As the war reached a gory climax, Bengali supporters of Pakistan, particularly those belonging to the Jamaat-e-Islami, went around the curfewed city, picking up as many poets, academics and intellectuals as they could find. It was always their view that Bengali nationalism was produced by these people, the so-called Hindu-loving secularists and cultural activists. If the crackdown on 25 March 1971 was the beginning of the end, the day when most intellectuals were picked up, 14 December marked the explosive end of the carnage. Many bodies could be seen dumped in the swampy killing fields, but few could be identified due to the advanced state of decomposition. Corpses with arms tied behind their backs, bearing marks of torture and missing eyes, have become the visual memories of the torture and murder of 1971. Among the many who disappeared and were never found was Munir Chowdhury, the man who introduced me to Faiz.

Friends and strangers

 

Faiz did visit Bangladesh in 1974, as part of an official delegation as an advisor on culture. He met with his friends but the closest ones like Shahidullah Kaiser, Munir Chowdhury, Zahir Raihan, all writers and CP activists, had disappeared. Others were uneasy with Faiz as memories, unshared history and the reality of two distant states came between friends. He clearly missed the warmth of their friendship. In one of his most painful and beautiful poems, ‘Hum ke thehre ajnabi’ (We who have been rendered strangers), Faiz summed up his personal agony – and that of many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis whose friendship had been torn asunder by the war. The final lines are:

Un se jo kehne gaye thhe Faiz, jaa sadqa kiye

Ankahi hi reh gayi vo baat, sab baatoon ke baad

Faiz, that one thing which I went there to say with all my heart

That very thing was left unsaid, after so much had been spoken

Friendship is a much more complicated matter than one imagines, for in Southasia politics can burn friendship with the flames of conflict.

Faiz’s politics died in Pakistan soon after he was jailed in 1950; only his poetry remained. With each day, though, his status as a poet soared, while admiration for him spread throughout the Subcontinent. Eventually, Faiz had become among the greatest legends of all. One could ask whether he left the building of his people – the somewhat fuzzy definition of ‘people’ which Southasian socialism imagines existing beyond borders – as after 1947 his world was determined by the country in which he lived. His socialist imagination was encircled by Pakistan’s politics, and the very politics he wished to change overcame his resolve.

Faiz’s personality was much more than just that of a poet. Indeed, that is the root of my sorrow – an unreasonable feeling, I concede. We have also seen how people who are unable to change politics sometimes become depoliticised beings. Munir Chowdhury once lamented publicly that he was defeated by the temptations of life – he gave up the life of a party cadre to become a teacher. I am not sure what path Faiz followed, but I hope he found peace in supporting political causes in Pakistan.

It might be heretical to say this, but perhaps Faiz would have been happier in the more politically variegated soil of India, where his poetry is as much admired as it is in Pakistan. In India, only a crippled form of socialist politics breathes, but at least it exists. I concede that to suggest another home for Faiz, particularly India, will be tantamount to committing blasphemy in the eyes of some. It is cruel to Faiz, too. He lives on wherever Urdu remains alive. And yet, it is important to remember one more time that Faiz grew into adulthood and recognition in an undivided Subcontinent amid its dreams.

The communist, the rebel, the secularist, the romantic poet, the happy lover of alcohol – all had in the end become a Pakistani. So it was that when he visited Dhaka in 1974 with Bhutto, it was only to find that many of his friends had been killed or disappeared by the same forces he represented in Bangladesh. The chasm became infinite and complete: he visited accompanied by those with whom his Bangladeshi friends could no longer associate.

People who dream of a better world are often condemned to become what history demands of them.

جس کو فلک نے لوٹ کے ویران کر دیا

؎ کیا بود و باش پوچھو ہو پورب کے ساکنو

ہم کو غریب جان کے ہنس ہنس پکار کے

دلّی جو ایک شہر تھا عالم میں انتخاب

رہتے تھے منتخب ہی جہاں روزگار کے

جس کو فلک نے لوٹ کے ویران کر دیا

ہم رہنے والے ہیں اسی اجڑے دیار کے

------------------------------

اے وائے انقلاب زمانے کے جور سے 

دلی ظفرؔ کے ہاتھ سے پل میں نکل گئی 

بہادر شاہ ظفر

-----------

ساحر لدھیانوی

آؤ کہ آج غور کریں اس سوال پر 

دیکھے تھے ہم نے جو وہ حسیں خواب کیا ہوئے 

دولت بڑھی تو ملک میں افلاس کیوں بڑھا 

خوشحالئ عوام کے اسباب کیا ہوئے 

جو اپنے ساتھ ساتھ چلے کوئے دار تک 

وہ دوست وہ رفیق وہ احباب کیا ہوئے 

کیا مول لگ رہا ہے شہیدوں کے خون کا 

مرتے تھے جن پہ ہم وہ سزا یاب کیا ہوئے 

بے کس برہنگی کو کفن تک نہیں نصیب 

وہ وعدہ ہائے اطلس و کمخواب کیا ہوئے 

جمہوریت نواز بشر دوست امن خواہ 

خود کو جو خود دیے تھے وہ القاب کیا ہوئے 

مذہب کا روگ آج بھی کیوں لا علاج ہے 

وہ نسخہ ہائے نادر و نایاب کیا ہوئے 

ہر کوچہ شعلہ زار ہے ہر شہر قتل گاہ 

یکجہتئ حیات کے آداب کیا ہوئے 

صحرائے تیرگی میں بھٹکتی ہے زندگی 

ابھرے تھے جو افق پہ وہ مہتاب کیا ہوئے 

مجرم ہوں میں اگر تو گنہ گار تم بھی ہو 

اے رہبران قوم خطا کار تم بھی ہو  

============

آسی رام نگری

دل کی بات کیا کہئے دل عجیب بستی ہے 

روز یہ اجڑتی ہے اور روز بستی ہے 

پہلے اپنی حالت پہ ہنس لے خود ہی جی بھر کے 

دیکھ کر مجھے دنیا طنز سے جو ہنستی ہے 

آج کا زمانہ بھی واہ کیا زمانہ ہے 

زندگی بہت مہنگی موت کتنی سستی ہے 

اس سے دور کیا ہوگی تیرگی زمانے کی 

شمع روشنی کو خود آج جب ترستی ہے

---------------

ہم تو بدنام محبت تھے سو رسوا ٹھہرے 

ناصحوں کو بھی مگر خلق خدا جانتی ہے 

کون طاقوں پہ رہا کون سر راہ گزر 

شہر کے سارے چراغوں کو ہوا جانتی ہے  

-----------------------

‏‎‎اب مرے خواب مرے خواب سے شرمندہ ہیں

میں وہاں ہوں کہ جہاں صرف بغاوت ہو گی

اس تعفن میں تنفس کی دعا رہنے دو

ایسے ماحول میں کیا خاک محبت ہو گی؟

----------------

‏جب قتل ہوا سر سازوں کا

جب کال پڑا آوازوں کا

جب شہر کھنڈر بن جائے 

پھر کس پہ سنگ اٹھاؤ گے

اپنے چہرے آئینوں میں

جب دیکھو گے ڈر جاؤ گے

‎---------------

مجھے رونا نہیں آواز بھی بھاری نہیں کرنی 

محبت کی کہانی میں اداکاری نہیں کرنی

ہوا کے خوف سے لپٹا ہوا ہوں خشک ٹہنی سے 

کہیں جانا نہیں جانے کی تیاری نہیں کرنی

ہمارا دل ذرا اکتا گیا تھا گھر میں رہ رہ کر 

یونہی بازار آئے ہیں خریداری نہیں کرنی

------------------------

حرف حرف، لہو لہو

مجھے خط ملا ہے غنیم کا

بڑی عجلتوں میں لکھا ہوا

کہیں رنجشوں کی کہانیاں

کہیں دھمکیوں کا ہے سلسلہ

مجھے کہہ دیا ہے امیر نے

کرو حسنِ یار کا تذکرہ

تمہیں کیا پڑی ہے کہ رات دن

کہو حاکموں کو برا بھلا

تمہیں فکرِ عمرِ عزیز ہے

تو نہ حاکموں کو خفا کرو

جو امیرِ شہر کہے تمہیں

وہی شاعری میں کہا کرو

کوئی واردات کہ دن کی ہو

کوئی سانحہ، کسی رات ہو

نہ امیرِ شہر کا ذکر ہو

نہ غنیمِ وقت کی بات ہو

کہیں تار تار ہوں عصمتیں

مرے دوستوں کو نہ دوش دو

جو کہیں ہو ڈاکہ زنی اگر

تو نہ کوتوال کا نام لو

کسی تاک میں ہیں لگے ہوئے

مرے جاں نثار گلی گلی

ہیں مرے اشارے کے منتظر

مرے عسکری، مرے لشکری

جو تمہارے جیسے جوان تھے

کبھی میرے آگے رکے نہیں

انہیں اس جہاں سے اٹھا دیا

وہ جو میرے آگے جھکے نہیں

جنہیں جان و مال عزیز تھے

وہ تو میرے ڈر سے پگھل گئے

جو تمہاری طرح اٹھے بھی تو

انہیں بم کے شعلے نگل گئے

مرے جاں نثاروں کو حکم ہے

کہ گلی گلی یہ پیام دیں

جو امیرِ شہر کا حکم ہے

بِنا اعتراض وہ مان لیں

جو مرے مفاد کے حق میں ہیں

وہی عدلیہ میں رہا کریں

مجھے جو بھی دل سے قبول ہوں

سبھی فیصلے وہ ہوا کریں

جنہیں مجھ سے کچھ نہیں واسطہ

انہیں اپنے حال پہ چھوڑ دو

وہ جو سرکشی کے ہوں مرتکب

انہیں گردنوں سے مروڑ دو

وہ جو بے ضمیر ہیں شہر میں

انہیں زر کا سکہّ اچھال دو

جنہیں اپنے درش عزیز ہوں

انہیں کال کوٹھی میں ڈال دو

جو مرا خطیب کہے تمہیں

وہی اصل ہے اسے مان لو

جو مرا امام بیاں کرے

وہی دین ہے سبھی جان لو

جو غریب ہیں مرے شہر میں

انہیں بھوک پیاس کی مار دو

کوئی اپنا حق جو طلب کرے

تو اسے زمیں میں اتار دو

جو مرے حبیب و رفیق ہیں

انہیں خوب مال و منال دو

جو مرے خلاف ہیں بولتے

انہیں نوکری سے نکال دو

جو ہیں بے خطا، وہی دربدر

یہ عجیب طرزِ نصاب ہے

جو گنہ کریں، وہی معتبر

یہ عجیب روزِ حساب ہے

یہ عجیب رت ہے بہار کی

کہ ہر ایک زیرِ عتاب ہے

’’کہیں پر شکستہ ہے فاختہ

کہیں زخم زخم گلاب ہے‘‘

مرے دشمنوں کو جواب ہے

نہیں غاصبوں پہ شفیق مَیں

مرے حاکموں کو خبر کرو

نہیں آمروں کا رفیق مَیں

مجھے زندگی کی ہوس نہیں

مجھے خوفِ مرگ نہیں ذرا

مرا حرف حرف، لہو لہو

مرا لفظ لفظ ہے آبلہ

(ڈاکٹر سید صغیر صفیؔ)​

-----------------------

ہم تو بدنام محبت تھے سو رسوا ٹھہرے 

ناصحوں کو بھی مگر خلق خدا جانتی ہے 

کون طاقوں پہ رہا کون سر راہ گزر 

شہر کے سارے چراغوں کو ہوا جانتی ہے 

-------------------

 

دہلی میں’قلم برائے امن‘

پاکستان کے تقریبا 50 ادیبوں، فنکاروں، صحافیوں اور شاعروں نے ہند کے اپنے ہم پیشہ و ہم مشرب سے 21 تا 23 فروری تین دنوں تک چلنے والے رنگارنگ پروگرام میں ایک ایسا ساز چھیڑا جس کی بازگشت دور تک اور دیر تک سنائی دے گی۔

حالانکہ اس میں شرکت کرنے والی شخصیات میں وہ معتبر نام نہیں تھے جو ہمیشہ ہندو پاک دوستی پر ہونے والے مذاکرات، جلسوں اور مشاعروں میں ہوتے ہیں۔ اس کی وجہ بتاتے ہوئے پروگرام کی کوارڈینیٹر رخشندہ جلیل نے کہا کہ ’آؤٹ ریچ پروگرام کے تحت ہماری یہ کوشش تھی کہ ہم ہندو پاک کے دوسری صف کے ادیبوں، فنکاروں، صحافیوں اور شاعروں کو باہم اختلاط و ارتباط کا موقعہ دیں کیونکہ یہ وہ لوگ ہیں جو عوام سے بلاواسطہ جڑے ہوئے ہیں اور ہر سطح کی پیش رفت میں یہ وہ حصہ ہیں جو چھوٹ جاتے ہیں۔

اس تین روزہ کانفرنس میں جہاں ہندو پاک رشتوں، سیاست اور امن کی اشاعت میں فنون کے کردار پر عالمانہ گفتگو کا ایک سلسلہ رہا وہیں کتابوں اور پینٹنگز کی نمائش اور بلوچی، سندھی، اردو، پنجابی اور سرائیکی ادب سے قرات کا اہتمام بھی کیا گیا۔



پاکستان سے تعلق رکھنے والی شاعرہ بشرٰی فرخ
لاہور کے استاد بدرالزماں اور استاد قمرالزماں جیسے کلاسیکی فنکاروں نے اس میں شرکت کی اور تسنیم ہاشمی کی ‏غزل سرائی سے اس تین روزہ کنونشن کا آغاز ہوا۔

بھارت کے مشہور جرنلسٹ ونود مہتا نے ایک سیشن سے خطاب کرتے ہوئے اس تقریب کو ایک اہم قدم قرار دیا اور اس ضمن میں اپنے بھرپور تعاون کی یقین دہانی کرائی۔ اسی موقع سے بھارت میں مقیم پاکستان کے سفیر عزیز احمد خاں نے بھی انھی خیالات کا اظہار کیا۔

لاہور سے تعلق رکھنے والے جرنلسٹ ارشاد امین جو اس سے قبل بھی پچھلے سال سجاد ظہیر تقریب کے سلسے میں بھارت آ چکے ہیں انہوں نے کہا کہ اس قسم کے ارتبات کے اہتمام سے ہی رشتوں کی اصل روح نظر آتی ہے۔

پشاور سے تعلق رکھنے والی شاعرہ بشرہ فرخ نے کہا کہ اہل سیاست جس طرح چاہیں اپنے رشتے رکھیں اہل قلم کم از کم اتنی کوشش تو کر ہی سکتے ہیں کہ اپنی جانب سے رشتوں کو خوشگوار بنائے رکھیں۔





بھارتی شاعر مخمور سعیدی مشاعرے کے دوران
بسنت کی سرمئی شام میں کھلے آسمان تلے جامعہ ملیہ اسلامیہ کے اوپن ایئر تھیٹر میں پاک بھارت شاعروں نے وہ سماں باندھا کہ پاکستان سے آنے والے شاعر ساجد علی ساجد نے اپنے اس سفر کو ’پیار ہی پیار‘ کا نام دے ڈالا اور انھوں نے اپنی نظم ’پیار کا پیغام‘ میں ہندو پاک کے اٹوٹ رشتے کو اشعار میں اس طرح باندھا، ملاحظہ ہو:

امن کی جوت جگانے میں یہاں آیا ہوں
پیار کے گیت سنانے میں یہاں آیا ہوں
آپ کے دل بھی کشادہ ہیں مجھے ہے معلوم
آپ کو اپنا بنانے میں یہاں آیا ہوں

جب انھوں نے یہ بند پڑھا تو ایک سناٹا سا چھا گیا

میں وہاں ہوں میرے اجداد کی قبریں ہیں یہاں
یہ تعلق ہے کچھ ایسا کہ مٹائے نہ بنے
جسم میرا ہے وہاں روح کا مسکن ہے یہاں
کیا کروں مجھ سے کسی طور نبھائے نہ بنے

پاک بھارترشتے کے حوالے سے تقریبًا تمام شاعروں نے کچھ نہ کچھ ضرور پڑھا، ملاحظ کیجیۓ چند اشعار:

نییتیں گر صاف ہوں اور صدق ایماں ہو نصیب
دور کر سکتی نہیں ہم کو حدود ہند و پاک
لطف یہ ہے آج پھر اردو زباں کے فیض سے
آ ملے ہیں سینہ چاکان وطن پھر پرتپاک

پنڈت آنند موہن گلزار زتشی نے اردو اور ہند و پاک کے حوالے سے یہ قطعہ بھی پڑھا جسے کافی پسند کیا گیا۔

آئین تو ہم روز بدل سکتے ہیں
اخلاق میں ترمیم نہیں ہو سکتی
ہم روز نئے ملک بنا سکتے ہیں
تہذیب کی تقسیم نہیں ہو سکتی

دھلی کے استاد شاعر مخمور سعیدی کے ساتھ ساتھ دوسرے شعراء نے بھی اس عنوان کے تحت چند اشعار پڑھے ، ملاحظ کیجیئے:

اچھا ہے زمانے کا کہا مان لیں دونوں
کچھ تم بھی بدل جاؤ کچھ ہم بھی بدل جائیں
تم آؤگے تو نئی محفلیں سجائیں گے
پھر ایک بار محبت کو آزمائیں گے (علی ظہیر، پاکستان)

مشاعرہ کسی یونیورسٹی میں ہو اور عشق و محبت کے اشعار نہ ہوں یہ کیسے ممکن ہے۔ چنانچہ تمام ‏شعراء وقت کی نزاکت کو دیکھتے ہوئے تمام سن و سال کے باوجود جوش و جوانی میں ڈوبے ہو‎‏‏ئے رنگین اشعار سنانا نہ بھولے۔ ملاحظ کیجیئے چند اشعار:

کچھ خواب ناک جسم مہکتے تھے دھیان میں
ان سے بہ اہتمام کو‏‏ئی دم نہ مل سکے
کافی ہے دل کے قریۂ برباد کے لیے
ان لڑکیوں کی یاد جنہیں ہم نہ مل سکے (سعید احمد، پاکستان)

عجیب دور تھا کیا سر پھرے زمانے تھے
کسی کو دیکھنا اور دیکھتے ہی مر جانا (ہمایوں ظفر زیدی)

لکھ کر ورق دل سے مٹانے نہیں ہوتے
کچھ لفظ ہیں ایسے جو پرانے نہیں ہوتے
ہو جائے جہاں شام وہیں ان کا بسیرا
آوارہ پرندوں کے ٹھکانے نہیں ہوتے ( مخمور سعیدی)

بدمست سی الڑھ سی کنواری پلکیں
راتوں کی جگی نیند سے بھاری پلکیں
ان پلکوں پہ جس وقت سے ڈالی ہے نظر
جھپکی نہیں واللہ ہماری پلکیں (گلزار زتشی،دہلی

New Pakistan.

PM Imran Ahmad Khan said he will now be the global ambassador for Kashmir. Since ambassadors of India and Pakistan are gone and borders between the two countries securely sealed, Mr. Khan seems to think that the world arena of diplomatic conquest is free for him. So he will be on world tour to talk about an issue that many people believe he knows very little about. All his knowledge will come from Pakistan's GHQ and Foreign Service bureaucrats. Wise people say: test of the pudding is in eating it. The world has tasted Pakistan's diplomatic pudding again and again for 70 years. Nobody liked it. Why? Because UN had decided to hold plebiscite in the huge and difficult territory of Jammu Kashmir & Laddakh only after it is demilitarized, which means all parties withdraw their armed controls and leave the people totally free.
The territory is divided and controlled by three nations: China, India and Pakistan. None of them withdraws its military presence and nobody will. So it seems Mr. Khan's pudding of protests will return home untouched like it always returned, because India has the equal recipe of protests while China is smug like a rock.
Mr. Khan knows it. But his ego does not let him admit. On the other hand his opposition parties shout louder than him to push him into confrontation. Politicians all over the world are known for their opportunism and lies; but in Pakistan their greed and incompetence has become proverbial. Not one of them had the moral fiber to admit that the issue is dead, that Pakistan needs to look inward to bring some hope and relief to its people.
It is perhaps time to admit that Pakistan had no solid right on Kashmir. It was the land of Shiva and Rama for 4000 years and became a Muslim sultanate only for 400 years. It was never a Caliphate. Aurangzeb's craze for Sharia ended Muslim rule. Then came Sikh rule and British hegemony till 1947. The sikh ruler of Kashmir opted to go with India in 1947. Pakistan organized tribal lashkars to occupy the present Pakistani part of Kashmir. Then started the claim that Kashmiris wish to be with Pakistan because of their religion.
History proved the religious basis as wrong in 1971 when Eastern part of Pakistan fought a bloody war for separation. Right now there are strong separatist tendencies in other parts of Pakistan. Pakistan's administered Kashmir is in poverty and deprivation. One can only wonder what sickness of thinking makes our Muslim leaders believe that they can unite more areas on the basis of Islam.
There is not much unrest in Kashmir to support the hysteria in Pakistan. Let us hope Mr. Khan, and his generals who seem to love peace, will declare peace to build a New Pakistan.
Mubrik Haider

Ayesha Siddiqa: Pak Army Doesn't Know How To Respond To India

سیکس اور سماج --- سعید ابراہیم.

 

https://archive.org/details/20190819_20190819_0600

سعید ابراہیم کی کتاب 'سیکس اور سماج'

پاکستان میں اقلیتوں کے مسائل

https://archive.org/details/20190813160000vur058programhq

Pitcher and Dust: Growing up Lower Class in Garhi Shahu, Lahore

When I was little my father cried watching a TV drama “Matti aur Mashkeeza” (Pitcher and Dust) about an old couple whose job was to water the searing dusty streets of Peshawar every morning. This was before streets went concrete. Gallons of water in a camel skin sack would hang from the old couple’s shoulders as they splashed the streets at dawn to make them cooler. The drama showed their love, scarcity of money and their profession being phased out because of municipal development. My father, whom I had rarely seen cry, cried at the show. “Such stories are rare on television,” he said.

I was born in Garhi Shahu. It is a neighborhood close to the Lahore Railway station. Garhi Shahu was called Mohallah Sayedan under the Mughals before it was permanently named after a gangster, Shahu. In my childhood, stories of Shahu’s anarchic lootings was a way to scare kids during late night power-cuts.

Lahore Railway Station (1940s)

The British laid a railway track in the area as part of growing India’s railway network to exploit its raw materials, and Garhi Shahu expanded for workers of the colonizer’s Railways, The North Western State Railway.

Top professionals and Christian missionaries living in the area were Goan Christians of Portuguese descent. Low-wage workers on the other hand were Punjabi Muslims and rural Christians--Dalits who embraced the Christian missionary promise to escape their untouchable status. They could not however escape casteism built into Punjab’s profession-based social system that designated them only to municipal jobs such as street cleaning.

After the British fled, and a new government stepped into the colonist’s shoes, The North Western State Railway became Pakistan Western Railway and my grandfather — hired as a mechanic under the Raj — retired as an engine driver.

With his retirement fund he added four rooms on his short four marla property. Two of those rooms became my home, when I was born to his son, thirty-three at the time, arranged married to an eighteen year old Pashtun girl, my mom.

Ami and Abu on their first date after marriage (Jallo Park, Lahore) (1987)

My own earliest memory of Garhi Shahu is around 1992, a few months before my grandma passed on. I remember grandma putting on a shuttlecock burqa to roam the Main Bazaar. Her children — my aunts and uncles — would gather in the house and blame each other loudly for having lost her. She had alzheimer’s. They had written our address on daadi’s wrist.

Garhi Shahu Main Bazaar

Somewhere in between their chai breaks, Sardaran Bibi would walk back home on her own and more often would be brought back by people who heard the missing person announcement in the masjid. A few years later, when I would watch the missing people announcement before the evening Punjabi news bulletin on Pakistan Television (PTV) in Lahore, and then on Doordarshan (DD) broadcasting from a tower twenty miles away in Amritsar, I would think of grandma. “Talash-e-gumshuda” (Search-for-the-missing) in Punjabi the announcer would say on PTV and “Gwache barey Ghoshna Suno” (Listen to the missing people announcement) in Punjabi on DD. Both state-run channels on either side of the Pakistan-India border ran a slideshow of passport-sized photos: “kanak pinna” (wheatish) boys and girls, often not of sound mind, poor and lost in melas (fairs).

My uncle whom we called ‘I’ (pronounced Aa.ee) lived in the other two rooms with his son. Aping his father’s career out of convenience, Aa.ee joined the yet again rebranded railways, now Pakistan Railways (PR) as a technician and ended up retiring as one. With his retirement fund he bought a Rickshaw and drove it six days a week, 7am — 2pm. Friday was a holiday. As we grew older, Aa.ee’s son took over his morning shifts and Sunday became a holiday.

The father-son duo homed pigeons on the roof. I would climb an old rickety bamboo ladder to sit with Aa.ee, both of us staring at the birds pecking at bajra (millet mix). The pigeons were of different breeds with different feather patterns and behaviors: doms and femmes, straight-edge, the meeks, couples and free-lovers, dyed and undyed all would gutargoo, perching on wooden planks stacked in a bamboo and mesh cage. Twice a day, the pigeons were let out, flying low over the rooftops in a flock as Aa.ee kept an eye out for the stupid one mistaking another flock of pigeons as its and thus switching houses. Negotiations between these houses took place in the street where the pigeons were traded, returned, new ones examined but rarely bought. Every night the birds were counted, some held in palms, the sick ones fed panadol and the pretty ones kissed.

After the Asr namaz, Aa.ee would read for me Abrahamic stories from the Quran, tell me stories of Sufis of Punjab and during power-cuts in the heat of the summer when we slept on the roof on vaan charpais he’d pull out some after-dark specials: urban legends, railway ghosts, shape-shifting snakes and more Abrahamic stories.

My favorite local legend was a barber whose shop was over an underground abattoir, with a makeshift cafe outside. Clients seated in the barber’s chair would get sucked downstairs and become the food served in the cafe. It was my first introduction to how assembly line production really worked. Years later, when I figured the Garhi Shahu barber’s resemblance with a Victorian fiction character Sweeney Todd, I asked Aa.ee which story inspired which? He said that the gora stole it just like they stole the Kohinoor. I believed it.

Then there was a sheshnaag cooling off on the railway tracks that got run over by a cargo train driven by my grandfather between Amritsar to Lahore on the regular. He brought the cobra’s carcass back home and distilled its oil to cure an underarm rash…It was cured but he never got his armpit hairs back.

One cannot corroborate these stories, these are oral histories that stay in the imaginations of people who narrate them. These narrators will not have the grammar nor the social mobility to access those who have power to promote one narrative over another; and as time goes on whether these stories actually happened or not doesn’t matter, much like the Abrahamic tales, faith ends up overriding fiction.

In the hot muggy summers of the 90s, around July — August my brother and I would have our heads shaved off. There would be collective prayers after Jummah for baran-e-rehmat, the grand rain. The maulvi sahab would ask Allah for help and we would exclamate it with a loud Ameen. Aa.ee once told us that if innocent children rub their bald heads together under the open sky, it helps the prayer reach Allah faster. That day, as me and my brother sat on the roof, perching on a shared wall with our neighbors, we rubbed our bald heads. I felt bad for not feeling innocent. But, It rained.

The monsoon rains overflowed the open lines of sewage on either side of our narrow streets. We would peep outside our window, into the flooded streets, dropping paper ships and incessantly spotting turd in the nehr (puddle). When a new political party won the elections, construction workers swarmed the streets to cover the open sewage lines and to lay concrete on the dirt-and-brick ground. The dirt-and-brick ground we grew up on and the sewage lines we fell into many times over ruining our Eid dresses. My aunts and mother made halva and pooris to celebrate this ‘development.’

My father’s youngest sister — my favorite Aunty Peena — was an avid product reviewer. Every Friday she would walk to our house from choti galli (short street) to review new brands of detergent for my mother, not caring or knowing that they were all owned by the same American or British corporations. Surf Excel was bad, and Ariel was good, the next week Ariel had ruined her clothes and she had to turn back to Surf excel. She never liked Express Power. Eventually she started to make the detergent herself. Aunty would wrap a thick plastic bag around her hand, and stir the caustic soda with other fuming chemicals in a round plastic tub. She would then split the DIY detergent with my mother. Aunty Peena didn’t like the orthodox thinking of her older sister, Cheena, a widow, she would boycott the detergent production and instead synthesized her own Kaala Sabun (black soap). For Cheena detergent was bougie and for Peena the black soap smelled pendu (rural).

Me (left), sisters (right)

When I got measles, Aunty Peena and Cheena distributed black roasted chickpeas and phalliyan (sweet rice puffs) among the neighborhood kids as sadaqa to ward off the evil eye, a ritual they continued and later my mother picked up in times of crises. Baalo Kuriyo Cheen Wandi Di Laye Jao! (boys and girls come and get these free snacks) a loud kid would yell for other kids to gather in a crowd. My aunts stood on the doorstep holding snacks close to their bellies in their dupattas shaped as bags

The trauma of poverty means lifelong suffering. Even when you’re out of it. Especially when you are out of it. The suffering is not only because you don’t have money to buy the daily liter of milk, have run out of rice and flour or the staples like onions and tomatoes are too expensive to make daal. The happiest day with my family was when we searched for the only money we knew we had lying around somewhere in the two rooms of our house but didn’t know exactly where. From morning till late afternoon, my siblings and mother searched for the 10 Rupee note, making jokes about the situation and chuckling. We finally found it in my mother’s 80’s beauty box. Hunger was a temporary challenge. A challenge of the body. The defining trauma that just sinks into your psychic depths is due to what poverty brings with it: violence: emotional, physical, sexual, patriarchal and class violence, uneasy access to education, abuse, neglect, humiliation, family dysfunction and untreated mental health issues. Things that mark your unconscious, without you knowing because, survival mode.

We had an often over drafted credit account with the corner shop, Nalkay Wala (The guy with the tap). “My dad says write it down” I would have to say to the Nalkay Walla after buying a kilo of sugar, or a tea box. We were lucky that my maternal aunt from Islamabad would courier us some dry rations whenever she could (sugar, daal, pettle, sometimes instant noodles) often she sneaked money in an envelope. That 7x7 aid box was secretly awaited but rarely talked about.

My mother was raised middle-class and could read. She saw her husband the day of her nikkah and when she was brought to the compact four marla house, the aunties of the neighborhood flocked to see the young fair-skinned Pashtun bride. Four joint families of 17 people shared the house. My aunties and uncles talked in Punjabi with each other but would sometimes switch to Urdu to talk to my mother. Pashto was our code language: used for sharing secrets, for private conversations and for scoldings.

The first word in English I learned was “guilty.” I just knew what it meant. It came to me watching a 90s BBC news bulletin on Shalimar Television Network (STN). It was a free terrestrial channel, which means we could get it through our antenna on our analog TV, just like state-run PTV. STN was PTV’s commercial alternative with slightly less state control (like what U.K.’s ITV was to BBC). The channel paid western broadcasters to re-broadcast their programming from 6am — 2am. CNN’s Larry King Live was on at 7am, switching to BBC World News at 10am, Cartoon Network came on at 5pm and TNT movies played in the after dark hours. Whenever a too western thing such as fashion shows with skin showing, movie scenes in which men and women were drinking, hugging, kissing, fore playing (big in the 90s popular American tv/movies), Johnny Bravo, Madonna or Michael Jackson came up, the screen pixelated, like the pixels in MS Paint. I pictured a guy or two whose job was to be alert, to immediately press a button whenever such corruptive imagery popped on the live broadcast, press a button and pixelate the screen. If one wanted to focus, which me and my brother definitely did, one could see what laid beneath the thick blurry pixels. The sound always remained on. Just knowing that someone’s realtime action in Islamabad did something to my TV everyday was fascinating. Many times, especially late at night, the censor guys were pretty delayed in pressing the button, and if a rebel was on shift that night, the screen did not pixelate at all. Me and my brother would scream in excitement.

On Eid, we’d dress up in neutral colored shalwar kameez and walk towards the local public school murmuring the takbeer. The Eid prayer offered at the school playground felt awkward so did the three hugs right after. I would then walk to the graveyard with Aa.ee, sometimes holding rose petals, other people held garlands and Metro Milan agarbatti (incense) in addition to the petals. The spread of flowers on a dead relative’s grave showed how rich one was. After silently reciting prayers for the dead we would walk back home to a floral spread on the ground with white-flour parathas, omelette and kheer on old but fancy dishes from my mother’s dowry collection.

Lakshmi Chowk, Lahore

I would watch Lollywood films playing as Eid specials on TV, then change into colorful ‘pants & shirt’ and walk the Main Bazaar, buying a 2-rupee qatlama placed in a piece of crisp newspaper, a 1 Ruppee spiced murgh daal, 7-rupee Pepsi bottle, and twice a year, on Eid, a 10-rupee Wall’s Chocbar ice cream, whose warm-toned commercial showed a woman on a bean bag neatly chowing it down as Take My Hand, the UB40 version, played on her VCD system. My siblings and I would watch other kids, dressed in gaudier clothes march in packs through the bazaar, talking in Punjabi and slurping on local Panda ice-cream. For us, that vibe wasn't cool.

St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, Empress Road, Lahore

Our mother had made a strong case for us to study in a Christian missionary school. Vans blasting Noor Jahan’s songs — the ones we wouldn’t hear on PTV/STN — and xingxis (bike-rickshaws) blasting Naseebo Laal on portable stereos would take us to Caren’s hospital. We would then walk a short-cut towards Saint Andrew’s Church on Empress road, our school. In recess, I would trade my daily lunch: a sugar-filled meetha paratha made by my mother with my friend’s pressed panini sandwich made by his maid. Same vans, buses and xingxis with blasting stereos would take us back home. An older man once grabbed my crotch in a crowded bus, I jumped off the moving bus and rolled on the road with my backpack on, stood up and walked home. The fare was Rs. 2 on a student discount.

In school it was bad to say and thus confess that you are poor. Me and my brother were on financial aid and when every few months the fee voucher was handed to me in class I would have to hide it, I didn’t know how to explain to my friends that why my fee was half of theirs, and even then how I was to explain to them in a few days when I would be standing on the cricket field as punishment for not paying that halved amount?

Rs. 2 bank note. No longer in circulation.

Sometimes, on my way back from school I would buy multi colored sugary badanas from Ghareeb Nawaz. After my generation witnessed its first military coup in 1999 — third one for Pakistan — a slickly promoted financialization campaign meant my 2-rupee budget wasn’t enough to buy the badanas anymore, the uncle at the shop however made exception.

On Christmas, in the rainy December, we would get dry fruits, nuts and tandoor-baked raisin cakes from our Christian neighbors, sing Jingle Bells in the school assembly and roam the school grounds as our teachers prepped a nativity scene. Around new year’s, the lower class Christian workers living in neatly aligned huts behind the school building were called in to hammer down some of the church’s facade. The broken stone and bricks would lay around haphazardly as white missionaries visiting from some foreign country would then be escorted to inspect the ‘damage.’ They would take pictures and jot down calmly in their notebooks. Whichever kid could approach them and talk in English was a hero.

Haque Street, Garhi Shahu on 12th Rabbi-ul-Awaal (2017)

On the prophet’s birthday on 12th Rabi-ul-Awwal, my mother, sisters and I would tour the neighborhood to see pahariyan: make-shift art on the streets made out of dyed, shredded wood, hay and styrofoam. Snow white pigeons perched comfortably over green domes of miniature styrofoam masjids — these miniature models celebrated themes of Punjabi folklore, Pak-India war narrative, and the prophet’s migration story from Makkah to Medina. After Maghrib prayer, the grand showdown was an all male mujra dance competition over Naseebo and Madam Noor Jahan’s songs. The winners of best pahari design and best dance performance were awarded gold colored plastic trophies.

Throughout the year, a man escorting Zuljinah — a horse covered with a black silk cloth — roamed the streets going house-to-house of our Shia neighbors. In Muharram, the milkshops gave out Sabeel sherbats, Rooh Afza and the sweet sandal and cardamom kind, free, from their giant drums that on regular days held gallons of milk. Autotuned naats (poetry praising the prophet) were new back then and coyly emanated out of the windows of our Barelvi neighbors. I remember my mother being scandalized after she took an invite to one of the women-only zikr (Sufi devotional practice) mehfils next door, held in a dark room. That thing was new. No one talked about the Ahmadi masjid that stood quietly on Allama Iqbal Road — eventually destroyed in the 2010 Ahmadiyya mosque massacres.

It was in Garhi Shahu, where I first understood that capitalism is amorphous when my father haggled for a keyboard for our first computer, a 486 model donated to us by my maternal aunt. Abu figured the shopkeeper is Ahmadi, and claimed he’s a Rabwah native… for a discount. I watched.

St. Andrew’s Church High School Prize Distribution Day (1997)

In Garhi Shahu, I also understood lower class solidarity when I’d be punished for my very off-brand dark green coat, a part of winter school uniform that my father would buy from lunda bazaar: the flea market next to the Railway station that stocks piles of foreign/western people’s goodwill clothes. The lunda clothes had a distinct thrift smell that won’t go. While being picked out of the morning assembly line by a disciplinarian teacher for not wearing the right shade of green, I’d lock eyes with other kids marching to the class…undetected, wearing the same lunda thrift. It was like a secret code between us, never uttered but always felt and understood.

In Garhi Shahu I also understood the socialized lower class shame when me and my brother stood on the cricket field as punishment along with other kids (many of them lower class Christians) who defaulted on their tuition fees. These fees were subsidized by selling my mother’s dowry. In 3rd grade a gold locket, with an ‘F’ (her initial) written in serif font was the last to go. That midnight, our father formally presented us with two options: to study at Iqbal High, a public school or work as a mechanic/technician, like our grandfather, and like Aa.ee did.

In Garhi Shahu I also understood the shades of sexuality, gender expression and levels of respectability as they flowed through people around me. Whether it was the all-men family affair of watching sexually charged Punjabi commercial mujra dance that ran on dedicated local cable channels, Khwaja Sira performers in the streets discussing most effective hair oil and shampoo brands with each other in their toli (street-dancing) breathers, a girl forcing her partner to “french-kiss” in choti galli as I walked to the van for my 6th grade school fun-fair, women soaking the sun on the rooftop discussing oppression of family patriarchs while spreading henna/mehndi in each other’s hair, pederasty in the murky gaming arcades where tattered curtains hung over the entrance and the screens of the bulky gaming machines were the only available light, or aggressively masculine teenage boys in embroidered skinny jeans and rust colored, henna-dyed and oiled hair, chewing paan on street corners giving way to my mother — out of respect — as she walked to teach at the local school for $6 a month.

In Garhi Shahu, mothers warned their children that if they go out in the streets in hot summer afternoons old Pathan [Pashtun] men will kidnap them. The old Pashtun men were Afghan refugees who picked plastic from the streets to sell and to survive. Homophobic taunts against Pashtuns — sourced from old fashioned British colonial cultural propaganda through books, films and academia — would echo in Punjabi stage dramas as juggats (repartee) and travel to my classroom as regurgitated racist jokes towards me. This racism was culturally and socially systematized, still widely taken to be benign but isn’t.

Tehreek-e-Minhaj-ul-Quran Ad, Baghbanpura, Lahore

In recent years, a brand of living is taking over Garhi Shahu’s public space. This reshaping of the neighborhood is spearheaded by Tehreek-e-Labbaik: a right-wing religious and political group hell bent on death penalty for people alleged for acts of blasphemy. Pakistan’s blasphemy laws were originally codified by the British Raj. Lower and working class muslims and non-muslims are core targets booked under these laws and often violently killed by vigilante groups. Auto-tuned naats and hymns now confidently blast through the Main Bazaar more than Naseebo Laal, casually grim warnings in Urdu against blasphemy and gumrah, loose women are plastered on walls, on the back of rickshaws and on mid-air hanging banners. Street-performing Khwaja Siras are now sparsely seen. This and other forms of social control has made groups once very visible in physical public space retreat to safer spaces, online.

The second word I learned in English was “torture,” again from a BBC News broadcast on STN. That helped me label and thus verbalize the violent reality of every day and night and of the day after. I still jump on loud sounds, have trouble with money and the monied, my jaw is constantly clenched and I sometimes forget to breathe.

There’s a complexity to representing the poor or their stories like Matti aur Mashkeeza did. The current representations of the poor in Pakistani media are formulaic, voyeuristic, reportative, investigative, imitational, or wrought with pathos or satire. The upper classes, their institutions and their agents, who are gatekeepers of traditional media are selling bad representations of the poor to the poor and to others. They will continue to make copy. Bad copies that eventually get hard wired in the collective psyche of the poor to a point they themselves end up identifying with these easy, bad representations, rather than trusting their own lived experience.

On my saddest days in Brooklyn — and there are many — seeing a flock of pigeons, dyed and undyed, fly over my Puerto Rican neighborhood, I find comfort. Even though, I cannot tell which pigeon is which, who is the dominant one, which one is having a hard time and who is a lover. Even though these pigeons coo and don’t gutargoo, staring at them with my partner through our window, fly over the rooftops and perch on our fire escape where we put out bread and rice instead of bajra gives me comfort.

As a child, I wanted life around me to be seen on the media around me without a top-down gaze as lower class stories are represented…imitated. As a grown man who could speak English, I got access to the guarded spaces of the upper and the middle classes, of rich diasporas and the whites. I wanted the life I had known around me to be understood by these others: the culture-makers, the trend-setters, the ones whose narratives are imperial, are heard, acknowledged and lauded and whose hot-takes, opinions and stories are ‘nuanced’ and thus overwrite our stories. After living out of Garhi Shahu for many years, I’ve realized that negotiating one’s life’s complexity with the imperial other is like rubbing bald heads together hoping for rain. It never does.

Saad Khan is a documentarian and filmmaker.